A coroner has found that the death of a newborn at Royal Lancaster Infirmary was due to gross failure of basic medical care.
After a five-week inquest at Preston County Hall, the headquarters of Lancashire County Council, the coroner has concluded that a newborn baby girl died due to the “gross failure” of basic medical care.
Ida Lock was born at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary (RLI) on 9 November 2019 but died a week later after suffering a brain injury when her umbilical cord was compressed and she was deprived of oxygen.
“Ida was a normal child whose death was caused by a lack of oxygen during her delivery that occurred due to the gross failure of the three midwives attending her to provide basic medical care to deliver Ida urgently when it was apparent she was in distress,” said coroner James Adeley.
He also criticised the hospital’s investigation into Ida’s death, calling it a “damning indictment of an ineffective, dysfunctional and callous system that has failed this family at every opportunity”.
Requires improvement
The most recent report in August 2023 from the Care Quality Commission on the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, found that the Trust “requires improvement”.
Maternity services at the trust had been placed in NHS England’s Maternity Safety Support Programme (MSSP), though the regulator found that it had improved.
Following the results of the inquest, Tabetha Darmon, chief nursing officer at the Trust, said: “We accept that we failed Ida and her family and if we had done some things differently and sooner, Ida would still be here today.”
“We take the conclusions from the coroner very seriously and have made a number of the improvements identified during the inquest. We are carefully reviewing the learning identified to ensure that we do everything we can to prevent this from happening to another family,” she added.
